Precious Person
by Miyazaki A2
Summary: A series of oneshots illustrating the complicated and yet so simple relationships between characters in Naruto. So far, Zabuza and Haku. Gai and Lee.
1. Zabuza and Haku

**_This appeared in one sitting. I got bored, and I was thinking back on how every character from Naruto seems to have a 'precious person.' Or if they don't, they long to find one._**

**_So, i've decided to start a series of oneshots called Precious Person. This is the start of it. Enjoy._**

* * *

He was dying. He was dying. He was dying.

And he knew it. He wasn't the sort of man to keep pushing when he knew for a fact that the door was marked "_pull"_. He knew that these few breaths were his last, and he wouldn't fight it. He had died righting wrongs, killing the man that had made that island a living hell for its occupants.

And he was with his precious protégé at the end. That poor, innocent young boy. Goodness incarnate, he had always thought. The epitome of naivety. It had never really bothered Zabuza until today.

_Why, Haku…? Why did you do it? Why…did you save me?_

His angelic face was spotted with blood. Blood that shouldn't have been spilt. Blood that should have kept flowing for decades to come.

_Haku…you shouldn't have…_

The dying man reached forward to touch the dead boy's face, and tears filled his usually remorseless eyes. It felt like a piece of him had already died, and the rest of his soul was just trying to catch up. Too bad that they would never be together again…

_**((Flashback))**_

"_**Haku."**_

"_**Hai?"**_

"_**When I pass on…if I haven't fulfilled my purpose yet…I want you to take my sword and fulfill it for me."**_

_**Haku surprised me by laughing at my sudden proclamation of faith.**_

"_**What's so funny?" I demanded, looking at the twelve-year-old with mild irritation mixed with a much stronger curiosity.**_

"_**Master Zabuza, by the time you pass on, I'll already be waiting for you in the afterlife."**_

**What a morbid thing to say, **_**I thought to myself, looking at my protégé with a cocked eyebrow**_**.**_** "Why do you say that? Are you sick?"**_

"_**No, of course not. It's just…if you were dead…I wouldn't have a purpose for living. And living without a purpose, as you taught me, is the same thing as being dead. Knowing that, I would gladly give my life before letting any harm befall you." He paused to think for a moment, and then turned his face to grin at me. "So, sorry, but you're going to just make sure that you carry out your dreams for yourself."**_

_**I shook my head, and then mussed up my protégé's silky hair. "You say that. But just you watch. I'm going down first."**_

_**Haku laughed. "Wanna bet?"**_

_**I frowned. "Quite a gloomy bet."**_

"_**We're shinobi, aren't we? We have to be gloomy just to make it through the day."**_

_**I shuddered at the look in my precious's eye. "How about this? Neither of us goes down. We live forever. Good plan?"**_

_**Haku gave me a seraphic smile. "An excellent plan." Then his smile wavered, and it transformed into a more morose expression, though it was still a smile. "But if that doesn't work out…I'll still die first."**_

_**((End Flashback))**_

Zabuza closed his eyes. _Well, Haku, you win. You went down first. You died how you wanted to die. For me. You fulfilled your self-proclaimed purpose. But there is only one thing I want to know… Why couldn't you have chosen something else as your purpose?_

He opened his eyes one more time to look at the precious face in front of him. The tears fell faster. _Haku…thank you. And…I'm so, so sorry. Please…forgive me._

As he closed his eyes for the last time, his last sight being the boy he had lived alongside with for so long, snow started to fall.

The demon and the angel were dead.

* * *

_**I stand in a dark hallway. There is a light at the far end. How cliché. The light at the end of the tunnel. Heaven. Yeah right. This is just another form of torture. As soon as I reach the light, some devil will come grab me and pull me down to Hell, where I belong. I'm not an idiot.**_

"_**You're not getting to me like this!" I shout to the hidden devil that I know is watching me somewhere in the darkness. "If you're going to take me, do it now and get on with the damnation!"**_

_**Then, I hear the voice that I had resolved never to hear again.**_

"_**Master Zabuza?"**_

_**I grind my teeth. There he is, right in the middle of the light. My angel, my son. My only precious person. He stays in the middle of the light, unable to come to me, though the look on his face clearly shows that he wants nothing more than to run to my side and never leave. **_

"_**Haku."**_

"_**C'mon, Zabuza. They're expecting us."**_

"_**They?"**_

"_**The rest of the angels. I haven't met up with them yet."**_

"_**Why not?"**_

"_**Did you really think I would rest at peace without you?" He willingly steps out of the light.**_

"_**Haku! No. Go back. I cannot follow."**_

_**He grins. The look on his face nearly breaks my heart. He is so naïve. Does he seriously think that I belong in Heaven?**_

"_**Zabuza, **_**come on.**_** If you couldn't follow, you wouldn't be here. I promise."**_

_**He doesn't lie. Well, yes he does, but not to me. Never to me. But there's a difference between being a liar and being wrong…**_

_**He walks closer to me, increasingly farther away from the light he belongs to. As the glare stops blocking out his features, I notice that he is wearing a simple white and silver **__**hakama. His hair falls down his back, and his fingernails still have his signature green nail-polish. He is a literal angel now. **_

_**But I am **__**Momochi Zabuza, the Demon of the Mist. I can no longer associate with this angel, for the sake of his own salvation.**_

_**As I turn away from him, I feel a tight grip on my forearm. I turn to face him, and there is an uncharacteristically furious expression on his cherubic face. The only times I remember seeing this face was when Gato attempted to attack me, and when Haku saved me from the Copy Cat nin's Lightning Blade. The look makes me shiver.**_

"_**Zabuza. Stop it. You belong where I belong. And if by some cruel joke I'm wrong, I'm still staying wherever you are. Nothing will stop that. Get it?"**_

_**I stare at the unrelenting force in his eyes, and then I drop my gaze. I can't deny him anything, even if the afterlife. **_

"_**Yeah, yeah. I get it."**_

_**Haku smiles. "I win again."**_

_**I ruffle his hair, and then face the light. If that devil is coming at all, he'll have to be quick about it. Because nothing is going to take me away from my precious person ever again. Nothing and nobody.**_

* * *

So, yeah. Zabuza and Haku. Short and sweet, but I still like it.

If you've got ideas for the series, let me know. I plan on doing Lee and Gai, and Iruka and Naruto. And no, i don't mean this series to be yaoi or anything like that. Just a look at the complicated and yet so simple relationships in the world of Naruto.

Ja na!

Miyazaki A2


	2. Gai and Lee

**_Gai's Point of View. Right before and during Lee-kun's lovely little surgery._**

* * *

Sometimes I wish you were my flesh-and-blood son. Sometimes I wish I had a claim on you stronger than just that of a teacher for his student. If you had been born my son, you would not have had to grow up thinking of yourself as alone and a failure. I would have been able to guide you through your powers—or lack thereof, as the case may be—and made you feel like you belonged in the world of shinobi. You wouldn't have had to deal with all those ninjutusu and genjutsu lessons that you had no hope of passing. I would have taught you early on that taijutsu was your destined path. I would've saved you so much frustration and humiliation.

Other times, I wish that I would have at least adopted you when I realized how much you meant to me. That way, you wouldn't have to go home to an empty house all the time and be reminded of how much you've lost. I know you were young when your parents were taken from you, but surely you must feel the loss deep inside of you? I can't believe you've lived alone ever since. Even your friend Naruto lived at an orphanage for awhile, and then with the Third Lord. But you…you had no one. No one to tell you that _no_, you _weren't _a failure, you were just different. If I had taken the initiative to adopt you and give you a home, maybe you wouldn't have had to work so hard to keep up…

But at the same time, I wonder if being alone all the time shaped you into the beloved protégé that I know and hold dear. If I—or anyone—had been around to hold you when you were scared, would you have learned to be so brave? If you had never had to deal with losing someone dear to you, would you still have grown up to hold the lives of your friends so precious? Sometimes I'm not sure. I know your nature is that of a brave, protective person, but would you have been such a dedicated disciple to me if you had someone else to take care of you? I'd like to think so, but…events shape people as much as nature.

I should have stopped you sooner in your fight with the empty-eyed Sabaku no Gaara. If I hadn't been so selfish in wanting to fulfill my dream, you might not be here on this operating table, putting your life into the hands of others. I know how hard it is for you, letting your destiny rest with someone else. It must make you feel useless, weak. But you're not, Lee. You're the bravest person I've ever met, and I promise to be there when you wake up. Because you _will_ wake up. I will stand here in this observation chamber with the nurses and interns all through the surgery, making sure with they do all they can to save you. And then life will be normal again. You'll be my student and I'll be your teacher, and we'll never have to go through this again.

I have to believe this. If—God forbid—anything happens to you in the course of today, I will lose my will to live. I know it must hurt you for me to say this. You've lost a lot, and me promising to end my own life because of you must seem like a heavy burden, and I'm so sorry that it has to be this way. Because, in the end, it is all my fault, and I'm not as strong as you. I couldn't live with the guilt.

Lee, please live. Live for me and for your teammates. They love you too, you know. They don't show it all the time, especially Neji, but that's just because that's not their way. I know you know this. You've got to know how much it hurt us all…to watch you be broken into pieces like that. Neji is cold, but watching your defeat affected him more than you'd think. I know that he hasn't come to see you in the hospital, but that's just because he doesn't want to face the fact that you could be defeated. You don't know it, and you probably never will, but he admires you. He thinks of you as family, and he truly believed that your will and strength was that of…dreams. Watching your defeat just heightened his sick belief in inescapable destiny.

Lee, please live. Live so that our little family can be whole again. Neji and Tenten and I…we miss your enthusiasm. We miss your voice and your insistence on training until we are all well past our limits. I don't remember the last time we trained past three in the afternoon. The others just don't have the initiative. They would rather train on their own and brood. Neji has his cousins to train on and Tenten has so many dummies to train on in her backyard that it's not even funny. As for me, I stay in the training field and pretend that our lives were the way they used to be the week before I signed you three up for the Chunin Exams. You see, you were the glue that held us three together, and we're falling apart. That is why I ask that you live. Not only for my own selfish desire to keep living, but also for the sanity of your teammates.

Tears prick at the corners of my eyes as I watch Tsunade-sama cut into your back. I wonder if you can feel it, even just the tiniest bit. I wonder if you realize that they've begun working. I wonder if you're dreaming, or if you're just unconscious. I really hope you're getting something pleasant out of this, not just cold numbness. I hope yofu're dreaming of the day when you can stand on your own two feet and run at a million miles and hour. I hope you're happy. I really, really hope you're not suffering anymore. It's been so hard to watch you struggle through this injury, knowing there was little to nothing I could do to help you.

I am so, so sorry, Lee. I can't bear to watch as they cut at you. I close my eyes against the horror, telling myself that I will share in your darkness. Really, though, I have to admit that I'm a little sickened by watching you bleed. It makes me uneasy. Not just the blood…but the fact that you're not even aware of it. I know fully-well that this is the only thing that can make your dream a reality, but still…at least in battles you know what's going on and you're able to do something about your own mortality rate. At least then you have a hand in your own fate.

This is torture. For the both of us.

Lee, I am so, so sorry. I can only hope you'll forgive me for putting you through this ordeal.

Sometimes I wish you were my flesh-and-blood son. But Lee, if you do just this one thing for me, just _survive_, I'll forget that you're not. I'll forget that we are not blood-relatives and I'll think of you as if you were my child. I'll make your life wonderful and love-filled, make you forget that you were ever alone in this world. That you're an orphan. I swear on my honor as Konoha's Green Beast, I _will_ make up for this torture.

So, for me, please live. You're too precious to me to let go. Please live.

* * *

**_I finally updated! YOSH!_**

**_I hope your eyes didn't bleed or anything as dramatic. I thought it was okay, but if you have other ideas about what is quality literature and what isn't...GO AWAY!_**

**_Thank you. And don't bother sending me the cleaning bill for your eyeball-blood-stained carpets. You'll never find me._**

**_Forever running away from the Coppers,_**

**_Miyazaki A2._**


End file.
